> And the results were????  If it were simply a location issue, it seems that you could have equalize them quickly by swapping positions. When you moved a bee-heavy end colony to the center, did it immediately lose bees?

We did not swap hives, for the simple reason that the hives with the most bees got that way because the flying bees oriented on those particular locations. I assume that they would simply fly back. 

The usual technique is to wait until the packages started to have substantial amounts of brood and use the brood to equalize strength. But better still, install packages during inclement weather so that they don't rush out, get lost, and gang up on a few hives at the edge of the apiary. 

This is the problem: they think they are still in Georgia and pretty quickly realize they don't recognize a single thing in the new landscape. This is just one of the many downsides of buying and using package bees. Probably far less of a problem with nucs. 

The main reasons I prefer packages: cheaper, I don't need more frames, nuc produces put junk combs in the nucs, more parasites in nucs, etc. -- Nucs build up faster and should vary less from one to the next (not always true, of course).

PLB

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